03410 - History of Astronomy

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course students are expected to have a good knowledge about Astronomy historical evolution making them able to : - place into the right historical environment the fundamental astronomical “steps”; - know in detail how astronomy, religion and society have been linked together throughout the centuries; - understand how space concept has evolved and universe structure and dimension as well, starting with the first distance measures made by the Ancient Greeks; - understand why it has been so conceptually hard abandon tboth the geocentrical system and the idea that “sky motions” had to be circular; - know the fundamental role played by astronomical instrumentation throughout the centuries.

Course contents

The course will show the main steps which have provided substantial changes in Astronomy. It will start from prehistorical way to link sun and star positions both to the changing of the seasons and to religious aspects (e.g. tombs) and it will end with the distance measure of Andromeda galaxy obtained by Hubble in 1923 that definitively proved that our galaxy was not the only one in the Universe. In the final lectures the course will give basics notions on the history of cosmology and on the future perspectives open by the new discoveries of the XX and XXI centuries. 

 

Here is a short summary of the subjects that will be included in the course:

 

ANCIENT WORLD:

- Sun and stars in Prehistory and in different places of the Earth.

- Astronomical knowledge in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.

- The first astronomical distance measures by Greek philosophers. Pythagoras and his school. The heliocentric model by Aristarchus of Samos. How Plato influenced cosmology. The model by Eudosso. Aristotle, Ipparchus of Nicaea and Claudius Ptolemy.

- Arabian astronomy and astronomy in the Middle Ages.

 

THE MODERN SCIENCE

- the revolution by Nicolaus Copernicus

- the contribution by Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes von Kepler, Tycho Brahe and Isaac Newton.

- How telescopes changed Astronomy.

- Wilhelm, Caroline and John Herschel. Joseph von Fraunhofer. The first measure of the stellar parallax.

- The birth of spectroscopy. The spectroscopic classification of stars. The introduction of photographic plates in Astronomy.

- The "Harvard computers": Williamina Fleming, Anne Cannon and  Henrietta Swan Leavitt. Variable stars and distance scales.

 

XX and XXI CENTURIES:

- The distance of the Andromeda nebula, and the proof of the existence of other galaxies.

- The discovery of the expansion of the Universe. The Hubble-Lemaitre law. The birth of observational cosmology.

- basic notions on the new discoveries of XX and XXI centuries over all the electromagnetic spectrum (e.g. Cosmic Microwave radiation, quasars, black holes) and the birth of multi-messenger astrophysics.

Readings/Bibliography

The following books must be intended only as a suggestion for further reading. It is not mandatory to buy one or all of them. Each book has a different/typical way to approach the subject and during the lectures detailed references will be given to the relevant texts.

Pannekoek Anton, "A History of Astronomy", Dover, 1989 (traduzione italiana disponibile online presso Alm@Dl)

Focardi Paola, "L'uomo e il cosmo. Breve viaggio nella scienza che ci ha resi infinitamente piccoli", Bononia University Press, 2019

Hoskin Michael, "Storia dell'Astronomia", Rizzoli, 2017

Carl Sagan, "Cosmos", The Random House Publishing Group, 2013

Teaching methods

Lectures will be given in the traditional way. Time will also be devoted to "questions and answer" sessions at the end of the macro-topics.

 

The students will have the opportunity to create individual programs including one or more subjects among the ones treated (or even not treated) in the course. Individual programs will have to be approved by the teacher.

 

Students from humanistic areas will have course contents more focused on philosophical aspects than on scientific-technological ones.

 

Assessment methods

Oral exam, lasting between 40 and 60 minutes. Students may have half of the exam focused on a subject that they have chosen and on which they have made a deep investigation. If this were the case, the remaining half of the exam will be devoted to verify, by means of a couple of questions, the students knowledge of the subjects addressed in the full course. If students choose the "traditional test" this will consist of 3 to 4 questions concerning the subjects treated in the course (or in the individual program if this were the case).

Teaching tools

Video Projector and PC. The slides used during the lectures will be also made available on Virtuale, at the end of the lecture. Sometimes, additional material (e.g. short videos, podcasts, research articles) will be made available

Office hours

See the website of Marcella Brusa